by C. R. Jane
“I saw you with him on the sidewalk, and I thought he was finally making his move. And I just knew if I didn’t try and I saw you someday with some other guy…I’d never get over it.”
I was speechless. It felt like I was actually in bed dreaming, because this couldn’t be real life. Things like this didn’t happen to girls like me.
“I-I don’t know what to say,” I finally admitted, my cheeks such a dark shade of red at this point that I felt like I could burst into flames at any given minute.
“Say that I have a chance, that I haven’t ruined everything by being a coward and not going after what I want more than anything before this point. I tried to forget you. And it was impossible.”
“You have a chance,” I all but squeaked out, and his answering victorious grin was one that I filed away in my mind, determined that I’d remember it forever.
Conversation was easy after that. Maybe I was a fool to just accept everything he’d said…or maybe I was just desperate to believe this wasn’t all a dream. But either way, I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Dallin could have me as long as he wanted me.
As I ate my grilled salmon and we chatted back and forth about school, it was easy to see why every girl in town had fallen under his spell—he was just that charming. The rest of dinner went so well, it was a no-brainer to let him hold my hand as we walked out to the car.
I was inexperienced. And when I said inexperienced, I meant I was the kind of girl who’d had a few fumbled, awkward kisses during middle school and high school dances that made me want to never be kissed again…and that was it.
Which was why even hand-holding felt like a pretty big deal.
It was a cool night, the kind of night that held the threat of winter but was still trying to hold on to what had been a glorious fall. I loved this time of year…loved everything about it. The pumpkins, the early morning frost on the grass, the flannels and football.
And tonight, it felt even more magical.
We were almost back to his car when I felt it—a trickle of unease like someone was staring a hole right through my skull.
I surreptitiously looked around, just to make sure I wasn’t crazy. Besides a few people walking in and out of the restaurant, the parking lot was relatively empty. There certainly wasn’t anyone staring at me.
Weird.
Convinced I was imagining something, as I did on the regular, thanks to my love of reading and my habit of daydreaming…I resolved to ignore the ominous feeling and continue to enjoy the night.
The feeling of being watched didn’t fade until the restaurant was out of sight. And it took a lot longer than that for the unease it had given me to fade.
Just like I’d suspected, Dallin had understated the type of gathering we were going to. Instead of a “couple” of football friends, it appeared the entire junior college and all of their friends were at this party. Raucous laughter and screams of excitement filled the air. People yelled out Dallin’s name as we walked through the crowd, everyone checking me out to see who he was with.
I wondered what they thought. I’d never spent much time worrying about my looks. I knew my place in the world, and how I looked fit in just fine for that. But Dallin had always been so much larger than life that I found myself wondering in that moment if I looked like I fit with him at all.
Acting at ease as always, Dallin put his arm around my waist, waving to people as we walked but never stopping to talk to anyone.
We finally got to a back room that was bursting with people. I recognized many of them as being on the football team with him. Dallin made sure I had tickets to every one of his games…along with a jersey.
Hmmm. Maybe I was a bit oblivious. Thinking back on it now, his hookups never seemed to get tickets to the games.
Several of his teammates came over to us, and they exchanged those weird, complicated high fives and manly hugs that guys seemed to like to do. The guys gave me curious hellos, many of them glancing over my figure appreciatively as they did so. I felt Dallin’s fingers tighten around my waist, signaling a possessiveness I didn’t think he was capable of.
There was an assortment of drinking games happening all around the room, and we quickly joined in a game of flip cup. I wasn’t sure that I wanted Dallin drinking since he was my ride home, but to my relief, he poured Sprite into our cups. No one said anything, just another sign of the status Dallin held with the team.
The night flew by. The room was filled to the brim with beautiful girls, many that I had seen hanging around the football team at school…but Dallin seemed to only have eyes for me. It was a heady feeling, and I savored every look, every smile…every touch he gave me. Each one of them meant something different than they would have just the day before.
It made me have dangerous thoughts. Ones that wondered if Dallin could be a one-woman kind of guy after all. Of course the other part of me, the more rational side, wondered if this was just how he always was on first dates. It would explain how he was always getting lucky.
Regardless of Dallin’s intentions, I actually had fun, which for an introvert like me was kind of a miracle. And when we finally left the party at around one AM, I felt like I was floating.
I didn’t object when he pushed me gently against his SUV, encircling me with his arms until I was caged against the car.
And I certainly didn’t put up a fight when he kissed me.
I’d dreamed of what kissing Dallin would be like. I’d mapped it out in my mind as I’d lain in bed, certain that it would be the pinnacle of my life. It wouldn’t be my first kiss, but I knew without a doubt it would definitely rank as the best one I’d ever had.
The reality of kissing Dallin however…was a bit different.
It lacked something. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. It’s just for a girl who read a lot of romance books—more than was probably healthy as a matter of fact—I’d thought a lot about what a kiss with someone you were in love with would be like.
And this wasn’t exactly it.
It was good. Sparks still flew. But it wasn’t the kiss I’d thought it would be, the kind that would haunt my thoughts until the day I died if I didn’t get the chance to experience it again.
I wondered if there was something wrong with me, or if this was a big fat signal that Dallin would never be able to live up to the vision of him that I’d built up in my head.
Either way, when Dallin pulled away, he looked dreamily satisfied, placing one more gentle kiss on my lips before releasing me. He didn’t seem to be suffering from the same concerns.
There was a heavy silence in the car on the way home. Dallin held my hand the entire time, sneaking glances at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. He kissed me again when he walked me up to the door of my house.
“When can I see you next?” he asked gently, pushing the strands of hair off my face that had fallen into my eyes. I stared at him, wondering why he looked different to me now than he had just this afternoon. Moonlight was shining down on his usually golden features, making him seem more mysterious than usual. That look was there again, the one that promised something…something I wasn’t sure of. I was almost scared of what it meant.
My first instinct at his question was to ask him if he was sure, but I figured that wasn’t the confident girl thing to do. “I’m free tomorrow,” I whispered with a forced smile.
His eyes lit up at my answer, and he brushed one more kiss across my lips before walking backwards away from me, as if he wanted to hold on to the sight of me.
“Text me as soon as you wake up,” he said with that same starry-eyed look. Despite the warning in my gut, I couldn’t help but feel a little rush of butterflies at his eagerness, but still trying to play it cool, I simply nodded and walked inside the house.
I ran up the stairs, feeling a little bit like I was walking on air as I did so. I opened the door to my room and gave a little shriek when I saw that my mother was sitting on my bed in the same place she had been earlier.
“Mom?” I asked questioningly. At nineteen years old, I didn’t have a curfew. My mother, in general, had always thought that I was responsible and had treated me accordingly. We had the understanding that I was transitioning into becoming an adult, and for the most part, she treated me like one.
Unlike before my date, my mother was no longer trying to hide the despair she seemed to be feeling. There was a look of true sorrow on her face, and she was still holding the same piece of paper that she had been holding earlier.
“Come here, darling,” she said in a quiet voice that held the prospect of tears. I cautiously approached her. She patted the space on the bed next to her, and I sat down beside her. I wanted to cry for some reason, just because I knew that whatever was about to come out of my mother’s mouth would change my life forever. Was it cancer? Had something happened to my brother? My mind reeled with all the terrible things that she could say.
I never would’ve guessed the truth.
2
Elena
“We’ve never talked about our family’s history,” she began unsteadily, folding the paper in her hands and then unfolding it over and over again until I was tempted to grab it from her before I went mad.
I looked at her, baffled. “Our family history” was literally the last thing that I’d expected to come out of her mouth. Working two jobs had finally made her crack.
“Mom,” I said hesitantly, reaching out to touch her. She jerked back from my touch like I was poison.
“You have to listen to me. Everything you know is going to change tomorrow. I thought…I thought it wasn’t going to happen…but—”
She shook her head, her hands trembling as they continued to hold on to that piece of paper that, looking closer at it, I realized was a letter. She took a deep breath, holding back the tears that I could tell were threatening.
“Our family has had a sacred responsibility for thousands of years. One gifted to us by the gods,” she told me reverently.
I looked around the room. Was I being punked? Was there someone hiding somewhere that was secretly recording us right now and I’d be embarrassed on national television later? Because that was the only thing I could think to explain why my mother was talking about freaking “gods” at two a.m. of all things.
We weren’t even particularly religious. My mom took us to Catholic mass once a year for Christmas, but she never seemed to be quite into it and I’d always felt like a fish out of water there.
I opened my mouth to ask her more questions, but she shook her head, signaling that I should let her continue. “You remember studying the ancient Greek gods in school?” she asked.
I nodded, still unsure of where she was going with this.
“What if I told you they weren’t myths?”
A giggle threatened to erupt from my chest, but the look on my mother’s face was so serious that it got caught in my throat. Was she sick? Maybe she was getting early dementia and this was a sign.
She continued on in a voice that was increasingly distraught, despite the fact that I’m sure the look on my face was one of disbelief. My anxiety grew as she began to give me a history of maiden sacrifices to the Greek gods. Why were we talking about sacrifices right now? Was I dreaming? She was throwing around names like Zeus and Hades.
Maybe Dallin’s kiss had somehow knocked me into another dimension. I should have given it more credit.
“The women in our family have frequently been required to become the sacrifices,” she said quietly, the paper in her hand trembling at her words. “It has been asked of us for thousands of years, the result of some deal made that no one now remembers…or maybe it was actually some kind of curse. My mother was told by her mother, who was told by her mother before that…and so on. I had begun to think maybe it was just a legend passed down the generations, as nothing had been asked of us for the past hundred years.”
She stopped speaking for a moment, as if the next words were more than she could bear to say. “I received this letter in the mail today,” she said in a distraught voice, holding out the paper in her hands for me to take. Whatever she was talking about, it didn’t sound like the honor she was saying it was. It sounded like death.
I hesitantly took the paper, still sure that my mother was losing it. It all sounded so fantastical.
Your service is required…the letter began in elegant cursive. The stunning silver letters shined from the page, imprinting in my consciousness until it was as if the words were carved into my brain.
Everything disappeared after that.
The process of opening my eyes felt like they’d been glued shut and I had to tear them open in order to wake up. I lay there in my bed, staring around my perfectly normal room, trying to get my bearings.
What a weird dream. A terrifying dream actually. I needed to not read thrillers before bed apparently.
I got up and headed to the bathroom to splash some water on my face and try to wake myself up more. The wood floor felt ice cold under my feet as I darted out of my bedroom and into the bathroom.
I looked haunted as I stared into the mirror. That was the best word to describe me. Haunted and tired.
As I walked downstairs, I expected my mother to be in the kitchen cooking pancakes, as she was most Saturday mornings before her shift at the local diner. But that wasn’t the case. My mother was instead waiting for me at the foot of the stairs, tears in her eyes. She was standing next to one of my grandmother’s packing trunks, one that I’d spent hours digging through in the attic as a little girl with my friends when we would play dress up on our play dates. My mom was wringing her hands in a fancy black dress that she only wore at funerals. The whole scene was…intense. And confusing. A macabre tableau for a nightmare I hadn’t realized was real.
I was getting the feeling I hadn’t been dreaming.
“They’ll be here shortly to collect you,” she said in a hitched voice as she wrung her hands feverishly, mimicking the motions she’d made last night with that letter. I noted absentmindedly that her hands were red and cracked, like she’d been washing them continuously.
“This is really happening? You’re trying to send me somewhere? I’m nineteen years old, I can’t just be shipped off,” I said indignantly, starting to get angry at how crazy my mother was acting. “If you didn’t want me in the house, you could have just told me,” I continued. I tried to think if there had been signs that my mom was unhappy with me? Had she asked me to do something that I hadn’t? Had she actually needed more money all along?
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, a bright crimson lash mark appeared on my mother’s arm. She cried out in shock and pain. I watched in horror as what seemed like a hundred other lashes began to show up across her arms, her legs, and even her face. Her cries filled the room as I watched in horror. I’d never seen anything like it, and I looked around the house, frozen in terror, paranoid that it had suddenly become haunted.
“You have to agree,” she gasped out as lashes continued to rake across her body. “It has to be of your own free will.” She screamed as another lash appeared to strike her across her back, sending her to her knees.
I didn’t know what to do. Did I call the police? Did I dare touch her? Did we need a fucking priest to perform a seance?
At that moment, the doorbell rang. The silence after the gong echoed through the house was somehow deafening. My mother slowly got off her knees, wincing with every step as she stuttered out halting breaths and walked towards the door.
“Mom,” I cried, finally able to move. I ran to try and get her to sit down, but she continued to stumble towards the door like she couldn’t control herself. “We need to get you to the doctor,” I said, momentarily relieved when it appeared that the lashes had ceased when the doorbell rang, but I was horrified at the blood that was copiously dripping from her body.
The doorbell rang again, as if the person waiting on the other side was in a hurry. She didn’t answer me, instead she opened the door calmly, as if she reg
ularly looked like an extra in a horror film.
The door swung open. Standing there in the entryway was a tall, thin man who looked more like a relative of the Grim Reaper than a living person. He was dressed in a fancy black suit, one that looked like it had come from a different age. The outfit came complete with a black top hat that sat on top of his liberally gray streaked hair.
“Is that the lady’s trunk?” he asked, gesturing towards where the trunk sat, as if we’d been expecting him and he wasn’t a stranger standing at the door.
My mother didn’t question his presence or ask him to identify himself. She merely nodded in assent. I began to feel lightheaded just then. This was really happening. I was really supposed to go somewhere with this man. My mother was shipping me off somewhere.
I opened my mouth to scream, and my mother bowed over in pain as cuts began to appear all over her arms once again. Shrieks ripped from her mouth as the lashes continued to pepper her body.
I choked on the tears that fell from my eyes. My mind wasn’t able to comprehend what was happening. But what could I do but go with this man for now? There was no one I loved more than my mother in the world, no one that had sacrificed more to make me happy. I couldn’t take what was happening. I had to go if it would stop whatever was terrorizing her.
No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than the slashes ceased once again. Mother took a deep, unsteady breath and limped to the kitchen, coming back with a wet cloth that she began to use to wipe the blood off of her. Her body shook as she tried to stand tall. She was trying to put a brave face on for me. But nothing she could do was going to change the fact that my last memory of her would be her looking like Carrie at the prom.
Everything was a haze after that. The man picked up my grandmother’s trunk and then walked out of the house without a word. I took a step towards the front door, and a glimmer of hope appeared on my mother’s face.
